Preface

A few weeks ago my wife, baby and I took on the challenge of flying all the way from Seattle, WA to Porto Alegre, Brazil (my hometown). This is a trip that I (sometimes we) have done many times over the past few years, but never with a baby. Travelling with a baby proved to be a much more challenging experience than by myself or just the two of us, so I thought I’d describe some of the challenges and approaches we took to fight this beast.

Flying from Seattle to Brazil turns out to be a lot harder than it should be. As far as I can tell, there are no direct flights from Seattle to anywhere in Brazil! Some of the other options are LAX (Los Angeles), IAH (Houston), ATL (Atlanta), but my go-to tends to be MIA (Miami), due to its geographical location, which makes it a good jumping off point to Central and South America, plus there are some relatively cheap Copa flights from there. The best route I could find over the years is SEA → MIA → PTY → POA, which combines lowest cost, shortest duration and least number of stops. I usually spend a night in Miami to soften the blow, which makes the whole experience a loss less miserable for me.

Unfortunately, the flying experience has been and continues to be mostly exhausting at best and infuriating and depressing at worst. This has been the case for me for the past 10+ years with no signs of improvement. Getting TSA pre-check did make going through security a bit less painful, so I’d strongly recommend that. Sadly, it only works in US airports though. I haven’t looked closely into stuff like Clear or Global Entry yet, but I’m still planning to.

For frequent flyers like myself, I’d also recommend getting a credit card that allows access to airport lounges. My credit card (Chase Sapphire Reserve) includes Priority Pass, which is not amazing, but has saved my butt a few times.

Anyways, for this particular trip, we decided to spend a couple of nights in Miami for the first leg of the trip to acclimate to the new timezone, weather, rest a bit and relax. I would highly highly recommend that to anyone who can afford the extra time in transit and also afford accommodations in Miami, which can get expensive depending on how much comfort you want, location, etc.

We rented an Airbnb on North Beach, which is less busy (when compared to South Beach) and we enjoy being close to the beach. Unfortunately, there was a storm passing by and it rained a lot, so we couldn’t enjoy the beach really. Still, it was great to give baby (and ourselves) a break from flights and airport, to rest and decompress.

Baby did actually surprisingly well for the first SEA → MIA leg, which is about 5 hours long. She mostly slept throughout the flight, with some playing in between. We booked an extra seat for her (middle seat between us) which I would highly highly recommend (again, if you can afford the cost). We buckled the car seat to the flight seat and it was smooth sailing, pretty comfortable for baby and ourselves.

Another decision that turned out to be the right one, was bringing along a portable bassinet. We have a travel friendly Bugaboo that’s light enough and we checked it as an extra bag.

For the 2nd leg, MIA → PTY (Panama City), that’s when things started to go wrong. This was supposed to be a pretty short flight, only about 3 hours, but we spent just as much time sitting in the aircraft at the gate, waiting to depart. No one said anything about why it was delayed or what was happening, which made it worse. The crew just apologized later and that was it. Anyways, the problem was that our layover in PTY was barely 2 hours long, so the 3 hour delay meant we missed our connecting flght. When we landed in Panama City, it has just departed a few minutes earlier. 😟

So, there we were in the PTY airport, hungry and tired, with a baby and not knowing how to get home. Luckily my wife had the idea of bringing a carrier with her in the flight, those “kangaroo style”, similar to an Ergobaby, which is great, that you strap to your chest, which was another life saver. Baby slept a lot on that, while we waited for the Copa staff to sort out new flights for a big group of angry Brazilians. Turns out there is only one PTY → POA flight per day, so we’d have to spend the night in Panama City and stay at a hotel until the next day, when we could take the next flight home. I knew this would happen, so it was barely a surprise, just another drop in the frustration bucket.

Copa gave us a voucher to a hotel and charted a (mini) bus to take everyone there. On top of that, they also lost our baby’s car seat which I had checked at the gate in MIA, so I didn’t have a checked bag receipt for it. I filed a complaint to the staff at the airport but they had no idea where it was (more on that later).

At that point we were exhausted and I was mentally and physically drained. We grabbed a bag and took the “bus” to the hotel with the other affected passengers.

It was comically sad, the bus was tiny and some people travelled standing, while the driver was on his phone and my wife was feeding the baby. It felt like one of those surreal experiences that you have to just laugh at, so you won’t cry.

Panama bus selfie

Anyways, we arrived at the hotel, ate and passed out. I should probably also mention there were bugs (mini cockroaches) in our hotel room. Not one, but several. One of them was on the bed 😨 Yup… Thankfully we were just too tired to care at that point and fell back asleep. Onto the next (and final) day.

We didn’t have a separate seat for baby for the Copa flights and that’s a decision I regret taking. Infants 2 years old or younger can fly as “infant on lap” for no extra cost. You’ll save some money but it will be a lot less comfortable than having a separate seat. I was hoping the aircraft would have baby bassinets at the bulkhead seats, but unfortunately they were not available. As far as I could tell, It doesn’t seem possible to know up front (eg.: at booking time) whether or not an on-board bassinet will be available, so it’s probably best to just not count on it.

Another learning was feeding baby during the flight. We brought bottles with breast milk, which are allowed to go through security. At MIA, the airport staff checked it thoroughly. On other airports, though, they didn’t seem to care about it at all, didn’t even look. If you do this, make sure you bring ice packs as well to keep the milk cool for the duration of the flight. We also had a bottle of liquid formula as a backup plan, which came in handy.

Onto our final flight leg, it was pretty uneventful, thankfully. Another six ish hours of flight time, but it went OK. I couldn’t believe when we landed safely in Brazil that we actually completed this journey successfully, or almost. We still had to recover our car seat with Copa. Luckily, they ended up finding it after a few days of intense calls to customer service, complaining on Twitter (err.. X) and filing a complaint.

Phew, what a journey. I hope this helps you if you’re going through a similar trip and feel overwhelmed not knowing what to do. I feel your pain 🙂. If you have any other learnings or corrections you’d recommend, please do not hesitate to contact me with that.

Good luck! ✌️